SANCHEZ: Can you explain what caging is? Im not familiar with that term.

GOODLING: My understanding  and I dont actually know a lot about it  is that its a direct-mail term, that people who do direct mail, when they separate addresses that may be good versus addresses that may be bad. Thats the best information that I have, is that its a direct mail term used by vendors in that circumstance.

Caging has also been used as a form of voter suppression. A political party challenges the validity of a voter's registration; for the voter's ballot to be counted, the voter must prove that their registration is valid.

Voters targeted by caging are often the most vulnerable: those who are unfamiliar with their rights under the law, and those who cannot spare the time, effort, and expense of proving that their registration is valid. Ultimately, caging works by dissuading a voter from casting a ballot, or by ensuring that they cast a provisional ballot, which is less likely to be counted.

With one type of caging, a political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable - because, for example, the voter refuses to sign for it, the voter isn't present for delivery, or the voter is homeless - the party uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent. It is this use of direct mail caging techniques to target voters which probably resulted in the application of the name to the political tactic.

On the day of the election, when the voter arrives at the poll and requests a ballot, an operative of the party challenges the validity of their registration.

While the challenge process is prescribed by law, the use of broad, partisan challenges is controversial. For example, in the United States Presidential Election of 2004, the Republican Party employed this process to challenge the validity of tens of thousands of voter registrations in contested states like Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The Republican Party argued that the challenges were necessary to combat widespread voter fraud. The Democratic Party countered that the challenges were tantamount to voter suppression, and further argued that the Republican Party had targeted voter registrations on the basis of the race of the voter, in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act law.

The lynchings that DID occur where almost exclusively done by Democrats. And they DID occur at times to PREVENT blacks from voting.

Shall I link to your tirade where you stated you only cared about the end result? That any ally was a good ally , that any one willing to vote for what YOU wanted was a good point?

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and republicans have never been guilty of voter fraud. you are all just a bunch of patriotic angels.

And I repeat that I don't really care too much WHO votes for democrats. If any American eligible to vote decides to pull the democratic lever, I am not going to refuse that vote. Neither will support fashioning the platform of my party to pander to any loony far left voters.

tell me again.... does the republican party refuse to count the votes of southern racists or folks who agree with the murdering of abortion doctors? I don't recall the republicans saying that their scruples would not allow them to accept the votes of Americans whose political philosophies were too repugnant for them. Please link me to some instances of THAT.

Report refutes fraud at poll sites
By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON  At a time when many states are instituting new requirements for voter registration and identification, a preliminary report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of the type of polling-place fraud those measures seek to stop.
USA TODAY obtained the report from the commission four months after it was delivered by two consultants hired to write it. The commission has not distributed it publicly.

NEW LAWS: Thousands of voters shut out | Read the preliminary report

At least 11 states have approved new rules for independent voter-registration drives or requirements that voters produce specific forms of photo ID at polling places. Several of those laws have been blocked in court, most recently in Arizona last week. The House of Representatives last month approved a photo-ID law, now pending in the Senate.

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